Posts Tagged ‘patent drawings’

Last week I introduced this illustration as a typical patent drawing and asked if you could decipher the riddle of its functionality.

Patent drawings are static, two dimensional (2D) representations of proposed inventions which are meant to be manufactured in three dimensions (3D). As such they present a lot of complex information on a flat page.

If you don’t have a clue as to what this machine is, I guarantee you’re not alone. The average person wouldn’t. There’s a bunch of lines, shapes and numbers, but what do they signify? How are they meant to all come together and operate?

As a matter of fact, the average person isn’t meant to understand patent drawings. That’s because they’re not what patent courts have defined as a person of ordinary skill in the art, a peculiar term which basically means that the Average Joe or Josephine isn’t meant to be able to interpret them.

Rather, the interpretation of patent drawings is left to individuals with specialized skills and training, a particular educational background and/or work experience. These individuals are typically able to view a static 2D image and visualize how the illustrated device moves, how it operates. Those said to fall within the court’s definition as having ordinary skill in the art are in fact often engineers and scientists.

Since the average person does not have a background in engineering and science, it can be challenging for patent attorneys to present their cases in the courtroom, particularly when relying on 2D representations alone. That’s where animations come in.

Next time we’ll use the magic of animation to transform our cryptic 2D patent illustration into a functional 3D animation of a machine whose operation is easily understood by the average person.

I remember the first time I saw a blueprint. It was during high school shop class where we learned how to use power tools to make the wooden chairs, tables, and chests shown in blueprints. I was completely confused. The odd paper and blue print, coupled with the liberal use of unfamiliar symbols, dashes and dots, and what appeared to be a mind boggling amount of detail was enough to start me in a cold sweat.

For many people, patent drawings are a lot like that first blueprint I saw. As a static two-dimensional (2D) representation of an operational device which is often complex, they present an immense amount of information on a page. The average person would be hard pressed to interpret them, and in fact, as we’ll learn later, they aren’t supposed to be able to.

We’ve been talking about patent basics in this series of blogs, and we’ll continue that discussion in the following weeks with a concentration on patent drawings. In the meantime, here’s one to ponder. When you look at a patent drawing like the one below, what do you see? What do you think this thing is and what is it supposed to do? We’ll find out next week…